Existential Crisis, Inc.

Stop letting political parties tell you how to feel.

You're going to hear a lot of rhetoric today. How democracy has failed. How it has triumphed. That it is dead - or given new life. Darkness o'er the land! No - a beacon of light!

Don't fall for the bullshit.

Here's what's going to happen: a hundred million people are going to go vote for someone they think will best represent their interests in the government machine.

That's it.

To categorize every one of those people as "good & righteous" or "evil & corrupt" based on how they vote is one of the most infantile, intellectually lazy things you could possibly do. You don't have a lock on their perspective. You would have to be an arrogant idiot to think you're so intellectually superior to every other person in the country that you know exactly what their best interests are and how they should vote.

So of course, that's exactly what the media, the GOP & the Democrats will do. Because the political machine doesn't give a crap about people anymore; it's all about winning. So you're going to hear over & over about how Your Side is the right & noble choice, while the Other Side is horrific & vile. Or vice versa. How you, oh noble voter, are a warrior in the fight against Yet Another…

EXISTENTIAL POLITICAL CRISIS!

(You can just hear the reverb around that phrase, can’t you?)

Here's our real "existential political crisis", folks. The people telling you that every election is a crisis. The politicians who want you foaming at the mouth, ready to fight your neighbor tooth & nail to give them power over you. It's a tried and true tactic, mobilizing voters against "the enemy".

It's all they really have, too. Their candidates all pretty much suck wet farts out of dead pigeons.

This is exactly why many people - the vast majority of them, I'd wager - are going to hold their noses today & pull the lever for someone they actually don't like very much, or even actively despise. Because they think the other guy sucks worse.

So go vote. Vote your conscience. After that, though? Go hang out with your neighbors. Find someone you know isn't on the same political page as you & TALK. I'm betting they're as frustrated as you. You two have to live with each other when this is all over. Your candidates don't. At 7 pm this evening, they will stop caring about you until the next "existential crisis" of an election.

Unfortunately, that's about the same time most people will stop caring, too. They'll watch the results tonight, cheer or boo, then wake up tomorrow & forget about it all until the cycle begins again in 18 months. And it will begin again. Until we all agree that this stupid "us vs. them" garbage and "every vote is a crisis" idiocy is killing us, they're going to keep doing it.

The world's still going to be here tomorrow. It's going to pretty much look like the world today, despite whatever story the media & the political class try to sell you. The sky isn't falling today. It's not going to fall tomorrow, either. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you a clunker of a used political message, hoping you won't pop the hood & look at the mess the engine has become.

Don't believe the hype, whether good or bad. Don't believe them when they tell you your neighbor is your enemy.

Most of all? Don't forget. That's what they count on, so they can crank the outrage up to 11 again next time. Until you tell them “enough”, every election is going to be “the most critical election of all time.”

That’s the real “existential crisis” of politics today… and it’s going to continue until we decide that it ends.